Globally, cardiovascular diseases (CVD) are the number one cause of death and are projected to remain so. An estimated 17 million people died from CVD in 2005, representing 30% of all global deaths. Of these deaths, 7.2 million were due to heart attacks and 5.7 million were due to stroke. If current trends continue, by 2030 an estimated 23.6 million people will die from cardiovascular diseases in the world. In America, an estimated 80 million adults (more than one in three) have one or more types of cardiovascular diseases. In 2005, about 864,000 people died of CVD, accounting for 35.3% of all deaths.
Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) is a noninvasive imaging technique with the capability to monitor and assess the progression of CVD so that effective procedures for the care and treatment of patients can be developed by physicians and researchers. It is capable of providing 3D analysis of global and regional cardiac function with great accuracy and reproducibility. MRI can provide three-dimensional analysis of global and regional cardiac function with great accuracy and reproducibility. Compared to ultrasound and X-ray CT, the advantages of MRI are: 1) It is noninvasive and uses non-ionizing radiation; 2) It has 3D and 4D imaging capabilities with high spatial and temporal resolutions and with good soft tissue contrast; 3) It can image the heart at arbitrary orientations; 4) It is valuable in diagnosing a broad range of conditions; 5) It is able to evaluate both the structure and function of the heart. There are also some disadvantages to MRI: it is not real-time, it is expensive, and compared to X-ray CT and ultrasound, has lower resolution.
Many approaches have been proposed for tracking cardiac motion and for computing deformation parameters and mechanical properties of the heart from a variety of cardiac MR imaging techniques.